I took creative writing in high school. Kind of hated it. Told myself I would never put myself in a position where I would need/want to use those skills. I also think blogs are corny and told myself I would never start one. I especially didn’t want to start one after I moved into a van. I didn’t want to be one of those #vanlifeinstasnapstabook people that BS’s people about how “luxurious” living in a van is. I lied to myself about the first two things, but the third part you won’t find here. So heres my first blog post.

What up people!?!? I’d like to state before anyone digs into this; I’m not a writer by any means. I just felt it would be exciting to start posting some trip reports, backcountry endeavors, as well as stories from my yearly road trips. I’m going to start out monthly, maybe some personal projects in between. I also got asked by my mom why I don’t have a blog like “the cool kids.” No that isn’t a joke. It may also not be the exact words, but the conversation went something like that. I’ve also been asked by multiple media outlets if I write as well so I figured what better way to break in!

I’m going to jump head first into this though so here is a quick background about myself. I grew up in Salisbury, Massachusetts. I went to Hallmark Institute of Photography for college (which no longer exists). I currently live in my Ford Transit 350 that I named Sequoia after my most recent trip. I started out living in my Toyota Tacoma part time to give the “van life” a test; things escalated quickly. I also hate grammar police and have an obsession with banana bread. Anything else? There’s the quick and dirty explanation of myself.

I do want to open up with a photo gallery and brief rundown from my most recent road trip. It started with a 2200 mile drive to Devils Tower in Wyoming. Two close friends Justin and Brendan hopped in the van and we took off to climb the Durance route on the south side of the Tower.

From there we moved down to Colorado where we roamed and climbed for a week in Lumpy Ridge, El Dorado Canyon, Table Mountain and Garden of the Gods. We had an Air BNB for a couple nights while we were there and got a chance to regroup. A few days later we said goodbye to Brendan as he flew back to Boston.

Justin and I continued on to take a quick pit stop to Moab and Monument Valley. Then on to LA to tag the Pacific Ocean and claim that we had officially driven across the country.

After LA we moved up to Sequoia followed by Yosemite where we spent a couple days hiking around the park. We quickly realized 3 days was not near enough time to tick off everything we wanted to hike and climb. Every night when it was finally time to rest we would drive over to the meadows underneath El Cap and watch the sun set, cook dinner, and observe as climbers headlamps would turn on one by one and we wouldn’t leave until we saw each headlamp turn off.

As our days in Yosemite came to an end we decided to head west to San Francisco
then head back to LA via the PCH. We spent two days driving the coast of California and stopped in Malibu to get in some long awaited climbing. (3 days was a long time without climbing for us at this point).

The following day a friend called and asked where we were. Alarmed he asked if we had seen the news. Come to find out the Malibu wild fire had started less than 24 hours after we had left. That being said we figured it was time to head back to Colorado.

We spent our final week living in boulder. I was shooting outdoor retailer in Denver and we continued climbing regardless of the drastic changes in weather and I got a day in skinning the day before we had to fly home. Our month long road trip came to an end and we flew back to Boston and I would return for the van in early January for some more Colorado skiing and to bring Sequoia home.

There was no saying what was to come from this trip. The only real goal was getting to the top of Devils Tower and everything else was brownie points. We also got up for sunrise to shoot long boarding shots on a few days and some cool stuff came out of that!

KAM MITCHELL PHOTO

Posts tagged with Climbing

Intro- 1 Month on the Road